The present invention relates to ornaments and decorations formed from pleated material; and more particularly to methods and apparatus for manufacturing such ornaments and decorations.
Decorative objects for adorning the outside of gift wrapped packages have been created from sheet material that has been repeatedly folded in a pleated pattern. For example, a butterfly 10 shown in FIG. 1 is formed by upper and lower pleated segments 11 and 12. The two pleated segments then are held in a compacted manner against each another along seam 14. A tie 16 is placed around the middle to hold the bundled segments 11 and 12 together. Next the outer edges 18 and 19 of segments 11 and 12, respectively, were fanned out to form the butterfly shape, while the midpoint is held compressed by the tie 16. The center tied area is covered by a piece of felt 17 cut in the shape a butterfly thorax. An adhesive patch (not shown) can be attached to the underside of the decorative object for fastening to a gift package, or other surface.
Previously, the sheet material which formed segments 11 and 12 of the butterfly 10 was folded into pleats by hand and then manually compressed and held together while tie 16 was applied. The hand folding operation was tedious and did not always produce uniformly pleated material which was obvious in the finished object. With complex decorations, a single assembly person found it difficult to compact several segments 11 and 12 and hold them together while applying the tie. Unless the two segments 11 and 12 were firmly compacted during the tying process, the segments were not always securely fastened together, which also adversely affected the appearance of the finished ornament.